The present invention relates to maintaining linearity of the hardware circuitry for a wide frequency range, and more particularly, to a method for performing phase shift control in an electronic device, and an associated apparatus.
According to the related art, a conventional phase interpolator can be utilized for performing phase interpolation to generate an interpolation signal having a resultant phase between two given phases. However, some problems may occur. For example, the operations of the conventional phase interpolator are typically limited due to the RC slew rate, and therefore, the conventional phase interpolator cannot be utilized to operate in a wide frequency range, and the conventional phase interpolator may suffer from linearity degradation, such as Differential Nonlinearity (DNL) and Integral Nonlinearity (INL). Examples of the wide frequency range mentioned above may include, but not limited to, the frequency range from 270 MHz to 6 GHz for some High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) applications, the frequency range from 2.5 GHz to 16 GHz for some Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCI Express, PCIE or PCIe) applications, the frequency range from 1.5 GHz to 6 GHz for some Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA, SATA) applications, and the frequency range from 1.25 G to 25 GHz for some Ethernet applications. Thus, a novel method is required for guaranteeing the capability of phase control in a wide frequency range such as that mentioned above, without introducing any side effects.